One of the things I knew I wanted to do in Berlin—along with all the things I didn’t know I wanted to do until I found myself doing them—was find a particular place I remember seeing in the movie Hanna and then walk around in its creepy orangeness. Yes—I find transportation infrastructure fascinating and, many times, beautiful. Form and function collide, and in this case, it was the heavy columns, low ceilings, and clusters of black pod lights I remember creating a suddenly empty place in busy Berlin where the baddies beat up Eric Bana.
But first I had to find the place, and all I had to go on was the sense from the movie this location was part of a subway station—a fair sense since heavy columns and low ceilings are usually holding up and underneath subways. And it turns out I was half‐right: I needed to find the Messedamm Underpass, not part of a subway station, but an underground pedestrian crossing area at Messedamm & Neue Kantstraße near the western-most point on the ringbahn—Berlin’s circular rail line—sometimes referred to as the Hundekopf due to its shape being more that of a dog’s head in profile rather than a circle. Messedamm is across town from where I’m staying, but I figure what better way to see some more of the city than to view it from an elevated train.
Turns out this rail line was also built in conjunction with a freight line, so the views I ended up seeing were mostly that of industrial parks, factories, big box stores, parking lots, other train stations, exit ramps, and rubble—all interesting in their own right, but made all the more dreary in the unwavering greyness of the what I’m told is the standard Berlin winter: perceptual overcast. I didn’t see the sun for a week and a half, and all the snow I ever saw fit into a single photograph.
However, back on the Dog’s Head, I reach my station, Westkreuz, leave the train, start walking vaguely in the direction I think I’m supposed to be going in, and then find a hint I’m getting closer, despite still not knowing exactly how to find what I’m looking for.
Just follow the orange tiles…
…and the colour‐coordinated graffiti. I also love graffiti.
I’m suddenly perplexed when the tunnel I’m in immediately heads up and I’m behind this subtle building, the Internationales Congress Centrum Berlin, one of the largest convention centres in the world, built in 1979, and currently closed while undergoing asbestos removal.
But—I see a flash of orange tile by a set of descending stairs, and as I walk down them, as I walk by the skaters whose wheels are echoing off the walls in a perfectly eerie way, just like in the movie, just before Bana realizes he’s had it, the sound of the city fades, and I find myself in the middle of the silence of the underpass on a grey Saturday afternoon.
I am happy in this moment.
In my next post it will be back to Iceland, back to where my trip starts, but for now it will be back to work for me starting tomorrow. And it might be, if all goes well, one of my last days as a pack leader. A new position where I work was created while I was away—I applied for it today.
If I get it I’ll be managing the inventory of the entire warehouse as well as all the pack teams rather than just my own. I’ll be working to solve the problems I run into regularly in my current job so they won’t be problems later. It’s my favourite kind of work—making the future better.
And I am happy in this moment.